The Gifted Soul Read online

  “We have to go.” Lyle broke in as the sound of an engine approached.

  The tears started back up as the administrator drove them out of Jefferson High’s parking lot. Sophie leaned her head against the back window as she stared out at the passing houses. Under different circumstances. she would have enjoyed being able to freely look at the world without having to squint or pretend there was nothing there when she knew better, but she had just lost the life she had worked so hard to keep. I only had one more year. One last test. I almost had it. She thought as they got on the highway.

  “Everything will be fine once we get to the Academy.” The administrator said positively. He kept checking back at Sophie whose tears dripped onto the giant SUV’s windows.

  “Things would have been easier if you had just taken the Sweep test honestly.” Lyle chimed in.

  Sophie glared sideways at him. “Could you stay out of my head? Nothing would have made this easy. You’ve just uprooted me,” she said, upset.

  “Yes. Sorry.” He said softly as he turned around in his seat. Sophie returned to staring out the window, as the two in the front chatted to themselves. She ignored them as she tried not to flashback to the time she hated most.

  The sun had begun to set and they were still on the road which had caught Sophie’s attention when her stomach grumbled. “Where are we going? We should have been at St. Marcus’ Institute by now,” she said, her voice thick from crying.

  “You’re not going to St. Marcus’. Alexandria’s Academy for the Psychically Gifted had claim to the students taken from Jefferson, which happens to be only you. We’re getting better at identifying the gifted early on, so very few make it as far as you have,” the administrator said.

  “Yeah, there was a reason behind that.” Sophie muttered.

  “AA isn’t like the institutes. It’s like a regular high school.” Lyle explained kindly.

  Sophie looked over at him, only seeing the dashboard lights reflecting in his green eyes. “Sounds like a self-help group.”

  Lyle’s responding smirk surprised Sophie, but not as much as his reply. “It kind of is.”

  Chapter 2:

  Lyle had been right. Alexandria Academy didn’t look a thing like the other Psychic Institutes in the country, with their white stone and plain cubic architecture; they were definitely at a school. Even from the outside of the gates Sophie could see the massive buildings within, they were a mixture of red and gray brick with large paneled windows. As the SUV made its way inside the first gate, Sophie couldn’t help but stare at the strange pattern the black bars were twisted into. They looked like letters, but she couldn’t make out the words as the gate faded into the darkness of the evening. The administrator didn’t get out of the car with her and Lyle, he dropped them off in front of the next gate (this one opened) that led to the campus.

  “Hey,” Sophie said, her voice just above a whisper. Lyle looked back at her before he stepped through the gate. His expression was soft and kind, completely different from the evil and cruel impression Sophie first had of him at her school. . . Her old school. There was no way she would be able to go back, not even with her uncle’s incredible lawyer wit. “Is it possible for you to drop your shroud of mystery, or whatever it is you call it?” She inquired as she followed after him onto the campus.

  Lyle chuckled as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “'Shroud of Mystery,' not a bad name, but I prefer P.S.B.”

  Sophie hurried to keep her pace the same as his, but his legs were so much longer than hers that it left her almost jogging to keep up. Lyle looked down at her to see her curious expression, only to smirk as he returned to looking where they were going. They followed a long stone path that split around two ridiculously large fountains with a respectable-looking woman statue standing in the center holding a book that looked to be on fire. The path led to what Sophie figured was the main building, with the school’s name stamped across the front, Alexandria’s Academy for the Psychically Gifted, in elegant script. At the back of Sophie’s mind she couldn’t help but think, someone spared no expense building this place.

  The two teenagers just made it around the first fountain when Lyle replied, “It stands for Psychic Signal Blocking. My friend came up with it. I can spread it quite many ways, like a completely psychic-free bubble no one can send anything in or out of. Well except for me.”

  “But can you get it off of me?” Sophie asked, slightly winded from hurrying after him.

  “I can’t. Not until we get to the headmaster’s office. Can’t have you running away,” he teased.

  Sophie rolled her eyes as she stopped following him. Standing next to the second fountain with the same respectable-looking statue in the center, Sophie waited for Lyle to stop and turn around. He stood out of range of the fountain lights, leaving his face a mystery to Sophie. If she could use her aura reading abilities, she would have been able to tell how he felt, but his P.S.B was still up.

  “I don’t have any abilities that would allow me to get away, you should have been able to see that. You’ve been inside my head, for all I know you’re still there, so just lift the block.” Sophie said, trying to raise her voice, but the fear of being somewhere unknown and being taken from her home was keeping her reserved.

  Lyle was silent for a while, and Sophie couldn’t tell if he was looking at her or not, but she felt self-conscious anyway. Turning around, he spoke at the same time Sophie felt her abilities come back to her. “Just for the record, I haven’t been inside your head since you told me to stop. Now come on, we’re running late and the headmaster is anxious to meet you.”

  Sophie barely heard what Lyle said as she stared wide-eyed at the air around the school. She wished she had her sunglasses to dull the brightness of the orbs floating around. There seemed to be even more spirits outside the city, but Sophie couldn't really tell since she had been ignoring them for so long. Each like an individual light bulb just moving along with the air current. When she was younger, Sophie was afraid of the orbs, because some had faces, while others would talk, but as she got older she realized what they were, they were ghosts. Spirits moving across the world in an endless circle.

  Lyle stopped walking again when Sophie didn’t follow after him. “What are you looking at?” he asked as he followed her gaze to the sky above them.

  Sophie pulled her attention from the glowing masses overhead and to the boy standing several yards away. “Just, umm, nothing.” She stumbled over her words and her feet to catch up to him. “Lead the way, you said the headmaster wanted to see me,” she said, gesturing for him to start walking again.

  Lyle gazed sideways at Sophie before he took the lead again. They made the rest of the walk in silence, Sophie was too distracted by the detail in the building's design, and the fact that she still couldn’t see auras when she closed her eyes. Lyle was the only other person around and he must have had his block over himself, keeping him a mystery to Sophie, and she wasn’t sure how that made her feel. No matter how much she found her abilities annoying, she had grown used to them as an everyday thing and it was hard for her to trust someone when she couldn't hear their innermost thoughts, or see how they really felt.

  The inside of the main building looked more like a mansion than a school, with marble tiled floors and a red carpet that led off in multiple directions, some going under closed doors while others went up a grand staircase that wound upward. Large screen banners lined the tall walls, one banner had the name and crest of the school; it was an arm carrying a shield with roses and a sword. Other banners scrolled through names with a list of numbers next to them like sports banners in normal schools, but these seemed to be scores of some other kind that Sophie hadn’t seen before. Red and navy appeared to be the recurring color scheme of the school, seeing as the red carpet they followed led all the way to the headmaster’s office which was labeled with navy blue lettering on a gray plaque.

  Lyle knocked and an eager voice told them to enter. The office was much like the rest of the school, marble floor, pictures and documents crowding the walls, and navy chairs around the hand-carved desk where a well-dressed man stood behind. Lyle shut the door behind them as the man behind the desk came around with a wide smile, holding out his hand for Sophie to shake.

  “You must be Sophia Walters. I am Headmaster Morgan Hales, it is a pleasure.” He introduced himself while still holding out his hand waiting for Sophie to take it.

  “Sophie,” she corrected in a hushed tone as she nervously took the man’s hand. Just like at the school with Lyle, nothing happened; she couldn’t even see his aura. She looked over her shoulder at Lyle who stood by the door like a soldier would, stone-faced and unmoving.

  Headmaster Hales chuckled at her reaction as their hands separated. “Don’t mind that. There are just some things a student doesn’t need to see from their headmaster’s head.” He brushed it off simply as he made his way back around his desk. “Please take a seat,” he said politely as he took the high-backed leather chair behind the desk.

  Sophie did as she was told, peeking back at Lyle who didn’t move from his position at the door.

  “Now let’s see,” Hales said looking at the computer screen on his desk. “You can see auras and read minds by touch. Interesting combination.” Sophie wanted to know when he found out about her abilities. Lyle had been tapping away on his phone most of the ride down; maybe he was buddies with the headmaster. Why else would a student come after another possible student?

  “She’s also very sensitive to ghosts, instead of just occasionally seeing a few,” Lyle broke in casually.

  Headmaster Hales' dark eyes widened as he brushed a hand through his salt and pepper hair, an excited smile spreading across his mocha-colored face. “Really?” He turned his energetic look on Sophie. “And you’re from Ohio? That’s great.”

  Sophie raised a brow at the headmaster, not understanding why where she was from was important, or how he even knew that she was from Ohio in the first place. It was possible that Lyle could have learned about it back at Jefferson, but Sophie barely thought about anything that far back anymore.

  “Okay, let’s get you into your dorm room. You’re probably tired from the long car drive,” Hales said, looking through a drawer of his desk. A moment later he pulled out a key-card on a red and navy striped lanyard and handed it to Sophie. “This is to your room, and gets you outside the main gate. You’ve been set up in the girls’ Senses Dorm. It’s been specially built to help block out outside brain waves and the windows are tinted to help with those sensitive to all sorts of light.” He explained while Sophie hung the key-card around her neck. “Your dorm number is 63; it’s found on the sixth floor.”

  “Okay,” was all Sophie could say. She didn’t want to be there after all.

  “I’m sure you’ll warm up to Alexandria Academy,” Hales said softly. “It’ll just take some time.” He smiled at Sophie as she got to her feet. “Lyle will guide you to your dorm.”

  “Okay.”

  Sophie didn’t hear another word until she and Lyle had reached the dorm buildings. It was the first sign of other students that Sophie had seen. Though it was only the voices drifting out of the open windows of the buildings they walked between, it must have been curfew already, though lights were still on inside dorm rooms. Lyle stopped outside a building that was marked as the girls’ Senses Dorm. Sophie’s head was full of confusion, questions, and homesickness that she forgot to say anything to him before entering the dorm. She could feel the looks from the other girls as she walked through the lobby heading straight for the silver elevator doors, in a hurry to get to her room so she could think without the worry of someone else overhearing.

  She had been expecting a small room with simple furnishings, but when Sophie opened her dorm room door she found a huge room with a queen-sized bed, TV with DVD player, and a computer on a high quality wooden desk. There was even a closet and a full bathroom attached to the room, which made the school seem even less normal than Sophie knew it to be. She carefully sat on the edge of the bed still in disbelief that it was real, but the soft mattress proved otherwise.

  “Wonder if Uncle Henry knows I’m gone yet?” She pondered out loud as she kicked off her shoes.

  It was routine to immediately transfer the student once their ability was detected, and their guardians would be contacted that night. With the way the world was, the guardians were given the choice to either continue parenting the child, or relinquish them to the government. It was a law that went along with the Sweep tests, which people believed made it easier on the child if the decision was made without creating a scene.

  As Sophie spoke out loud, she remembered that her cellphone was in her pocket. Her fingers fumbled trying to pull it out so she could call her uncle. Her heart was racing a mile a minute as she listened to the phone ring in her ear.

  “Hello?” Her uncle’s deep voice answered.

  “Uncle Henry,” Sophie began but was cut off by his monotone words.

  “Sophie, I am no longer your caretaker. P.R.U. now watches over you, so please do not call me again.”

  “But. . . But what about my stuff? We’re family,” Sophie stuttered as her heart tightened painfully in her chest. It was like someone had reached inside her and was squeezing it, waiting for it to burst in their grip.

  “They’ve already gathered all of your belongings, including your car, you should be receiving them tomorrow. We haven’t been family since you became one of them, it was better when we thought you were crazy. No wonder your parents dumped you on me.” He sounded disgusted, and irritated. His words only made Sophie’s chest hurt more, making her hunch over trying to catch her breath.

  “I-It’s not . . . not my fault,” she struggled to say, the pain of abandonment growing, ready to crush her into a million pieces.

  “I may know that, but I still can’t consider you a human. Goodbye.” The call ended, the dead line beeping in her ear for a moment before her phone screen darkened.

  Sophie dropped the phone onto the floor as she curled up into a ball at the end of the bed, trying to get the pulsating pain in her chest to go away. For the second time that day Sophie cried, this time she sobbed and snot dripped from her nose until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

  * * *

  “I thought I was going home?” Sophie asked as her mother helped her out of the back of the car. They were at the airport, with airplanes zooming overhead, distracting the seven-year-old from her own question.

  Her parents didn’t say anything as they walked hand-in-hand towards the front of the airport, making Sophie scurry to keep up. The girl did her best to stay close to her parents as they led the way through the crowds that scared her. There were too many people and too much color that she wanted to cry, but after the last several years, she had learned that crying about strange things only made her parents pull away from her.

  They stopped walking as they came up to a man sitting in one of the plastic waiting chairs. He was looking through a file which he closed upon their arrival.

  “Working even on holiday, Henry?” Her dad tried to joke, but even little Sophie could hear the strain in his tone.

  The man named Henry stood and shook her father’s hand saying, “This isn’t a holiday, Sam. I have court in the morning so let’s get this over with.” He turned to her mother and looked down to where Sophie was hiding behind her. “I assume you’ve already sent her things.”

  “Yes, they should be at the post office waiting to be picked up,” her mother replied with a shaky nod.

  Sophie met the man’s eyes that looked just like her mother’s green ones, and swallowed nervously. “I want to go home,” she said, ducking behind her mother so the man couldn’t see her anymore.

  “Sophia,” her father said in a firm voice which made her flinch. He always used that voice when she was in trouble, and she readied for her punishment, whatever it may be. “Be polite and say hello to your uncle,” he ordered.

  Sophie wiggled out from behind her mother, fidgeting where she stood. “H-hello,” she greeted.

  “You’ll be going home with Uncle Henry,” her mother said and Sophie felt an uncomfortable pang in her chest.

  “Why? I want to go home with mom and dad. I’ve been a good girl, you said I could go home with you if I was,” she said as tears sprung to her eyes.

  “Y-yes but,” her mother stuttered, avoiding looking down at her daughter. “You are going to live with Henry.”

  “Why?” she cried, clutching the pant leg of her mother’s jeans.

  Her mother jerked away, knocking Sophie off balance and sending her sprawling across the airport floor. Her father wrapped a protective arm around his wife as he eyed his daughter with ocean blue eyes similar to her own.

  “You are unnatural. The devil’s work.” He spat at her as she cried at the pain in her knees and hands. “You’re lucky that anyone would take you after the ward dismissed you.” His eyes were full of hate. Sophie backed away from him, not wanting to hear those words anymore.

  “Sam, we are in a public place,” Henry said in a calm tone as he put his file inside his briefcase. “Sophia, say goodbye to your parents; our flight will be leaving soon.” He grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair he had been sitting in.

  “But--” she sniffled.

  “Let’s go Amanda,” her father said, pulling her mother away.

  Sophie tried to chase after them but her uncle had grabbed the back of her jacket and hauled her onto his shoulder. He easily carried her off as she cried for her parents quietly.

  * * *

  “Freaky academy,” Sophie grumbled into her pillow the following afternoon. A man had stopped by that morning, dropping off boxes of her stuff and the keys to her car that currently laid on the desk. She hadn’t moved since the night before, still curled up at the foot of the large bed, avoiding interaction with other academy students. She didn’t want this place to be her home.